In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the ongoing
war against terrorism, criticism of American foreign policy has not only
been the job of the predictable and bankrupt left but also the object
of some in the libertarian crowd. They have ratcheted up the anti-war
rhetoric, all but issuing their own fatwa on the conservative movement-especially
those at National Review. Who are they kidding? It is not as if liberal
apparatchiks like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd are writing for NR. Sure
editors Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg purged their publication of the
shrill Anne Coulter but this hardly makes Buckley and Co. an enemy to
freedom.

There are those who claim that US power in the world is misplaced-the
traditional left who see the US as mere imperialistic baby killers and
the Libertarians whose lofty ideals lead them to thinking that the US
operates in some sort of giant freedom vacuum.

Libertarians are fearful of two concurrent themes that have emerged-one
the on domestic front, the other on the international side. First they
are worried that the terrorism has concentrated powers of the president,
may erode civil liberties, and could end up returning the big government
of the past. Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) recently wrote that, "Any
talk of spending restraint is now a thing of the past, we had one anthrax
death, and we are asked the next day for a billion dollar appropriations
to deal with the problem."

Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online, had a helpful response.
"It's worth pointing out that we've been told that we are on a slippery
slope for more than two centuries. And yet, from the moment the Declaration
of Independence was signed to the moment you eat your turkey dinner on
Thanksgiving Day 2001, Americans have become more, not less free. Maybe
not on a month-to-month basis but the trendline is undeniable. The emancipation
of the slaves, the enfranchisement of women and blacks, the breakthroughs
in technology which make Americans the most mobile  i.e. free 
people in the history of the world: All of these things describe a society
climbing up a slippery slope not swishing down it."

Second, one of their first principles, call it their foreign policy 'Alamo',
is that the reason the attacks took place were because of a growing American
Empire abroad and the fear that the US is the global policeman.

The Libertarians are right to be concerned over the erosion of freedom
but during war this is not something new-and growing numbers of people
would rather make sure that airport security is rigid rather than have
another 5,000 citizens dead. Not that it makes it right but it has come
to be expected.

But on the foreign policy front they continue to argue that American
foreign policy should return to the rationality of the time of Washington
and Jefferson. That separated by an ocean, America could live without
the interference and bother of European politics and wars. It was George
Washington writing to a friend in 1788 that said, "Separated as we
are by a world of water from other Nations, if we are wise we shall surely
avoid being drawn into the labyrinth of their politics, and involved in
their destructive wars."

Washington

Then in his farewell address Washington told the nation that, "The
great rule in conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending
our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection
as possible." To which Thomas Jefferson later elaborated, in his
First Inaugural Address, that American foreign policy should strive for,
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling
alliances with none."

How long did this golden age of non-interventionist foreign policy last?
Not very, if it ever was true it lasted until about 1823 -- but really
the US was already flirting with the European powers earlier than that.
It would be President Monroe, and his Monroe Doctrine, that laid out a
vision for an American Empire that would go from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Less than a century later America waged its first war of conquest-the
Spanish-American War in 1898. And by the end of World War I America was
showing its economic might which at that time represented 33 percent of
the world's GNP.

President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski,
in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic
Imperatives, wrote that, "America's political institutions and free
market economy created unprecedented opportunities for ambitious and iconoclastic
inventors, who were no inhibited from pursuing their personal dreams by
archaic privileges or rigid social hierarchies. In brief, national culture
was uniquely congenial to economic growth, and by attracting and quickly
assimilating the most talented individuals from abroad, the culture also
facilitated the expansion of national power."

Current Libertarian thought on foreign affairs takes basic premises of
harmonious trade and independence to new levels. The Cato Institute's
Ted Galen Carpenter's work, "Toward Strategic Independence",
argues for a policy of strategic independence which would best protect
American liberty and encourage world peace. These goals are part of a
larger school of "Libertarian nonintervention" which is not
isolationism per se but a grand strategy of military and political nonintervention
combined with economic and cultural contact across borders.

Carpenter suggests that the United States should only use the military
to defend her, "vital security interests." A new Libertarian
foreign policy would mean that it no longer takes part in UN peacekeeping
operations, that it's Cold War alliances must be phased out, it rejects
a role as global policeman, and becomes the "balancer of last resort
in the international system, rather than the intervener of first resort."

He concludes that, "The US government has the constitutional and
moral responsibilities to protect the security and liberty of the American
republic. It has neither constitutional nor moral writs to risk lives
and resources to police the planet, promote democracy, or advance other
aims on the bureaucracy's foreign policy agenda."

Ground zero for the libertarian anti-war movement can be found at websites
like Lewrockwell.com and Antiwar.com. Lewrockwell.com is the self-proclaimed,
"anti-state, anti-war, pro-market news site". It's founder,
Lew Rockwell, is also the founder of the Mises Institute and a vice-president
for the Center for Libertarian Studies.

In a recent article Rockwell says that, "I'd venture a guess that
there's less than 1 percent backing among full-time workers who earn less
than $30,000 per year for permanent stationing of American troops in Saudi
Arabia." But I would guess that those same workers know how much
a gallon of gas costs and if you told them that Saudi Arabia produces
a barrel of oil for $2.50 we'd all hope they would put two and two together.

In another piece he says this: "So let's talk motive. It's a fact
that the terrorist actions and continuing threats are a direct response
to US troops in Saudi Arabia, trade sanctions against Iraq, and the perception
that the US approves of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Anyone who pays attention to the news, and understands anything about
the region, knew that these policies spelled trouble even before bin Laden
announced it."

The terrorists don't have a grudge that is solely against the US-this
is a canard. Bin Laden, ever the student of history, has argued that the
actions on September 11th have to do with, among other things and in no
particular order, the expulsion of the Moors from Andalusia in the 15th
century, Israel, the United Nations, MTV, Bush (41), Bush (43), and so
on. Suppose for a moment that the US had not been engaged in the Middle
East? Iraq, for instance, is a menace not because of American involvement
but in spite of it. Bin Laden was kicked out of Saudi Arabia because even
the decadent House of Saud thinks that having a few US troops there will
give Saddam pause. Does the woefully inept "street" in the Islamic
world really know why the US is on their soil? I think not.

Another Rockwell contributor tries to equate America to the Roman Empire.
"The point suggested is that of pristine Imperial Conservatism: Empire
and its trappings are preferable to barbarism; if you wish to be safe
in your person and your property, you must empower Government to do whatever
it takes at home and abroad to develop and maintain the Empire that will
shield against barbarism, including that apparently burbling within your
own people."

It is not the empire building that is the problem. History shows us that
the eras of relative peace coincide with the existence of a reliable and
stable hegemon. Sure if the US is that hegemon it is going to pay a large
share of the burden for peace while others free ride. This unabridged
hegemony or empire is also a burden that carries with it a dire warning.
"The road to empire leads to domestic decay because, in time, the
claims of omnipotence erode domestic restraints. No empire has avoided
the road to Caesarism unless, like the British Empire, it devolved its
power before this process could develop," writes Henry Kissinger
in his latest book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? "As challenges
grow more diffuse and increasingly remote from the historic domestic base,
internal struggles become ever more bitter and in time violent. A deliberate
quest for hegemony is the surest way to destroy the values that made the
United States great."

Far be it for me to disagree with Henry the K, but as New York Times
writer Thomas Friedman tells it, "The global system cannot hold together
without an activist and generous American foreign and defense policy.
Without America on duty, there will be no America Online." Globalization
requires the US to ensure that goods flow. Terrorism, major wars, and
intra-state conflict, are all threats to that flow of goods and make pretty
much every backwater region in their interest.

Seriously if we left globalization up to France, for instance, not only
would they have surrendered our freedoms to Germany in World War II. Had
they managed to hold out globalization's freedoms would be limited to
stinky cheeses and women's unshaved armpits. If the US is not a global
leader, will the Rockwell crowd be willing to risk some other nation becoming
one?

There have been mistakes in US foreign policy. Its general liberal tendencies
are not unknown and its often-crusading exceptionalism is never to far
off. The selfish poll driven and focus group policies of the Clinton Administration
come to mind. There are intangible goods, say freedom, that are not the
sole possession of Americans. Just take a good look at the liberation
of Kabul and how happy those people were to do the little things-kite
flying, going to see a movie, shaving, removing the veil.

On a personal note I guess all this makes me a "warhawk". Am
I pro-state? Hardly, but that is the problem I have with libertarians.
If you are even the remotest bit sympathetic to the state, say during
wartime, you are a statist-against freedom and liberty. Forget that this
is preposterous claptrap for a moment. While you can't be slightly pregnant,
you can certainly be slightly, moderately, or predominantly libertarian.
Being more conservative during this war on terrorism in no way makes me
a socialist any more than living in Cuba would.

They call us conservatives overly statist like it is some sort of mental
problem rather than a realist reaction to what the world is, not what
it ought to be in some libertarian utopia. In an article in the December
Atlantic Monthly Robert Kaplan sees the conservatives somewhat differently.
"In the United States, Federalists like John Adams and Alexander
Hamilton expounded conservative principles to defend a liberal constitution."
In this way conservatism and libertarianism are yin and yang-more complementary
than combative.

"Real conservatism cannot aspire to lofty principles, because its
task is to defend what already exists. The conservative dilemma is that
conservatism's legitimacy can come only from being proved right by events,
whereas liberals, whenever they are proved wrong, have universal principles
to fall back on," writes Kaplan. In effect it is the conservatives,
those 'bastards' at NR and beyond, that are liberties greatest ally during
war-not as the libertarians argue, its greatest enemy.

My support for this war is not blind. To be fair, and honest, my warhawk
stance is nothing like Homer Simpson's love of donuts. The libertarians
are off their rocker if they think staying close to home will give us
more security and more liberty. Terrorism has given us pause. Liberty
cannot be placed ahead of life; terrorism requires us to temporarily rethink
our pursuit of happiness.